


promise me you'll stay beyond the sunrise

by hyunghoney



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Fantasy, Hyungwon is the moon, I'm Bad At Tagging, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 21:44:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15300663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyunghoney/pseuds/hyunghoney
Summary: hyungwon will fade with the rise of the sun, and jooheon will wait for tomorrow night.





	promise me you'll stay beyond the sunrise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tostitos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tostitos/gifts).



> i wrote this in one day and it's kind of bad, but i really hope you enjoy reading

When he was younger, Jooheon used to dream the moon could love him.

 

It was with him wherever he went – he used to imagine its glowing form drifting resolutely after him as he sat in the back of his parents’ car after dinner with their friends, staring after it through the window. Not even of this Earth yet always present, even when he couldn’t sleep at night and looked out of the window and there it was, inscrutable, so far-off, but Jooheon loved it anyway.

 

Jooheon fell in love with the night: the calm, the quiet, the stars – and the moon, _his_ moon, that he believed loved him as much as he loved it. He stayed awake as long as he could to be with his moon, but eventually it would send him off to sleep, quietly, with its mute lullaby. He’d wake again at dawn, just in time to see it be replaced by the sun, who’d never cared for him.

 

The moon looks nothing like what he’d imagined it to be, back in his childhood when he’d sworn to love it forever.

 

He’s twenty-three now, and he sits on the roof of his shitty apartment building at 5am, staring into the night. The sky is so clear tonight, and the stars shine from a million light years away. Jooheon leans back, craning his neck, but the moon isn’t in the sky.

 

Jooheon smiles, seeing from the corner of his eyes a soft glow the colour of the nearby streetlights. The moon catches him in its arms when he leans back a bit too far and almost falls, and pulls him into its chest.

 

“You’re up late again,” Hyungwon says, his voice serious in an attempt to be chiding.

 

“So are you.”

 

“I always am, Jooheon.”

 

Hyungwon wraps his arms around Jooheon, placing his chin on Jooheon’s shoulder. Jooheon rests his head on Hyungwon’s, closing his eyes for just a moment.

 

He feels Hyungwon move, after a while, and come in front of him instead. Hyungwon reaches forward to fix Jooheon’s slightly messy hair, running a finger lightly down the side of his face. His finger stops as it reaches Jooheon’s lips, and as if he’d been marking his target, he leans in.

 

Lips meet – Hyungwon tastes like light and the burning heat of the sun that he mimics. He grips Jooheon’s hands tight, and they lean into each other. He breaks away after a few moments but doesn’t go too far, their faces still breaths away.

 

Hyungwon’s eyes are closed now, and he sinks gradually until he rests his head on Jooheon’s thighs. He smiles at Jooheon, and Jooheon loses his breath at the sight – who else had ever looked down and seen the moon gazing up at them?

 

“I have to go soon, love.” Hyungwon’s voice is low, gentle, but he squeezes Jooheon’s hand painfully tight. Jooheon feels his protests die in his throat. It’s pointless to fight it now, he knows. With every minute they drift further apart, and Hyungwon has to go love other lonely boys in further parts of the world soon.

 

Hyungwon’s eyes shine, reflecting the stars above. And Jooheon knows he’d never need to look up if Hyungwon is always right here – but he isn’t, he can’t, not ever. Jooheon’s heart clenches, painfully, and he wonders if Hyungwon can see his eyes brimming over with tears.

 

Gently, Jooheon lifts Hyungwon from his lap and gets up. The cold breeze of the night brushes his face and neck as he rises, and he shivers. The night is so, so cold. And though Hyungwon is right there, watching him from the floor, whispering for him to come cuddle – the moon is cold too.

 

Hyungwon rises too, after a while. He stands next to Jooheon, and they look out at the road together. It’s so still at night, only a few cars driving by at this time. Hyungwon sits on the edge of the roof, his back facing Jooheon now.

 

Just like the first time the moon had come down from the sky to hold him, Jooheon is awestruck at the sight of him. He’s so ethereal, lighting up the night sky, so, so cold and so far away, so why would he choose to be with Jooheon right now?

 

_Jooheon couldn’t sleep again that night. It was 3am, and he sat cross-legged on his bed, his laptop burning holes in his pants with how hot it was. A video was playing on the screen that he had stopped paying attention to minutes ago._

 

_He felt frustration building in his chest, feeling like pain. Everything else was asleep in this time of night, so why did he have to be painfully awake, his senses on fire, restless energy pumping through him?_

 

_He walked to his window and gazed out, but the moon hid from him as if it, too, were mocking him. Why? It had always been there before._

 

_“You should go to sleep, Jooheon.” He jumped, and whipped around to see a tall, lanky boy stretched out on his bed._

 

_The boy looked over at him with a smile, and beckons him over with a wave of his hand. Jooheon felt strangely compelled to obey, so he walked over to the stranger without a second thought._

 

_The stranger shone, but not truly, a soft glow around his form in the colour of the yellow light from Jooheon’s neighbour’s window. He reached out and took Jooheon’s trembling hands in his own, and it felt warm yet not really there at all._

 

_He looked at Jooheon with knowing eyes, eyes that felt like they’d looked at him his whole life, knew everything about him, even the parts he hated, and loved him anyway._

 

_Jooheon felt his breath catch– it couldn’t be._

 

_“Do you know who I am?” Hyungwon had asked._

 

_Jooheon nodded, and Hyungwon pulled him into his cold embrace._

 

Tonight, even though it’s been years, Hyungwon feels as much of a stranger as he did back then. He stares, expressionless, out into the world to which he’s alien, but ever-present, ever-known. Jooheon walks to join him at the edge of the roof.

 

Hyungwon speaks without turning to him.

 

“You know I can’t stay.”

 

Jooheon swallows the lump in his throat. He knows.

 

A younger Jooheon had asked him once to stay, held his hand tight and refused to let go. Hyungwon had sniffed, smiled a sad little smile at him, and said he would try. When the sun rose, Hyungwon disappeared in Jooheon’s arms. Jooheon had cried for hours.

 

“I wish I could stay…”

 

Even Hyungwon’s voice is growing further away as the sun rises, slowly, inevitably. The Earth turns, and the moon goes too, and soon it’ll be day and Hyungwon will fade with the night. But in this moment he reaches out to Jooheon anyway, and Jooheon holds his lover’s hand, pretending they don’t only have minutes left.

 

Hyungwon will return at the end of the sunset today, but everytime he leaves the sun shines on everything and erases all trace of him. Jooheon hates the sun for dwarfing the moon, his moon, hates the sun for being so bright that Hyungwon couldn’t exist.

 

It’s 5:20a.m. They speak about nothing and everything, Jooheon tells him stories about his days and Hyungwon recounts the nothingness of space. The city stirs to life around them, birds singing and cars roaring past already. Hyungwon stares, fascinated as always, at the humans below them.

 

“Are you not gonna sleep? At least take a nap?”

 

Jooheon shrugs.

 

“I don’t have to get up early today.” He doesn’t add that he can’t sleep, or even blink, for fear of Hyungwon being gone in the next moment. He doesn’t have to tell Hyungwon what they both already know.

 

Hyungwon just nods, and shuffles closer to him. He nuzzles his cheek into Jooheon’s shoulder, looking so small next to him despite his height (not to mention being a planet). Jooheon’s fingers move of their own accord to ruffle his hair, laughing at the exaggerated pout on his face as a result.

 

The world around them gets brighter, the building getting illuminated gradually. It’s almost time, Jooheon realises. Hyungwon looks like his heart is going to break. He leans closer to Jooheon.

 

A fleeting kiss on the lips.  

 

“I’ll be back tomorrow, love.”

 

The moon fades away with the sunrise.

 

Jooheon waits, again, for the night.


End file.
